American actress, Angelina Jolie who underwent surgery for a double-mastectomy and later had her fallopian tubes removed -says her decision was influenced by her late mother who died of breast cancer.

The 40-year-old actress also revealed how her husband threw his weight behind her as she faced her life threatening encounter.

“The doctor that did my ovary surgery was my mother’s doctor. And apparently my mother had said to her, ‘Promise me you will take Angie’s ovaries out,'” Jolie explained. “So when we kind of got together, we both had a big cry, and she said, ‘I promised your mother, and I gotta do this.”’

“I knew through the surgeries that he was on my side and that this wasn’t something where I was gonna feel less of a woman because my husband wasn’t gonna let that happen,” she said, of the support she received from husband Pitt.

“To face these issues together and speak about them and talk about what it is to be human, I think can be a beautiful thing.”

Angelina’s husband, Brad Pitt said in a recent interview that his wife’s decision was mature—and she did that for their kids and the family at large.

“I was out in France, and Angie called me and I got straight on a plane to return,” Pitt recalled of hearing the news of his wife’s latest procedure. “Seeing my wife have to be her strongest and knowing that it’s the scariest news is terribly moving. And not being there is a horrible feeling.”

“There was no vanity to my wife’s approach,” Pitt said. “It was mature. ‘This is our life and we’re gonna make the best of it.’ There was a strength in that. It was just another one of those things in life that makes you tighter, and she was doing it for the kids, and she was doing it for her family so we could be together.”

Speaking on their successful union, the couple said;

“We were joking at one point,” Jolie said. “We were saying, like…’See, this is the beginning. And then this is ten years later. This is what 10 years of marriage will do to you.”’

“Every three months I’ll say, ‘Honey, I think I should learn how to cook,”’ the mother-of-six quipped.

“I just humor it,” Pitt responded. “But really, she has no business in the kitchen.”